In the last a few a long time, you can find been a gentle drop in the quantity of U.S. pilots. According more help for the Aircraft Homeowners and Pilots Association (AOPA), there were 827,000 lively, certificated pilots in 1980. By 2011, that quantity experienced dropped to just 617,000. In the course of that same 30-year time period, production of single-engine planes dropped from fourteen,000 for every year to much less than seven hundred.

But to the past three yrs, AOPA has built being familiar with this declining development and reversing it a top precedence. AOPA actions consist of acquiring a community of traveling clubs, and speaking out in Washington to help keep the increasing cost and complexity of aviation under manage.

Thankfully, 2013 quantities are indicating a positive upswing, according to details from your Basic Aviation Manufacturers Association's (GAMA) 2013 Typical Aviation Statistical Databook & 2014 Marketplace Outlook.

Here's a look at what's been causing the pilot and creation drop, and good news from GAMA's 2013/2014 aviation sector report.

What's been causing the decrease?

In accordance to a Washington Post article posted February 9 titled, “Small aviation businesses say pilot shortage could drive sector into the ground,” there are a variety of factors that have contributed for the decrease in pilots and manufacturing over the past decades, including rising fuel prices and heightened flying restrictions following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

One reason is that the recent economic downturn has left fewer people with discretionary income. Others place much of the blame on federal regulators, whom they accuse of making it too difficult for pilots to obtain and renew their licenses, which in turn hurts small aviation businesses and the aviation market as a whole.

Many commercial pilots come from the GA pilot pool, and the global airline business will need almost a half million new commercial airline pilots about the next 20 decades, in accordance to your Boeing Pilot and Technical Market Outlook for 2013-2032.